Handicrafts 2025 At Ithra Celebrates Cultural Heritage And Artistic Innovation

The King Abdulaziz Center for World Culture (Ithra), an initiative by Saudi Aramco, made 2025 a year dedicated to handicrafts through a broad program of cultural activities. Across the year, Ithra organised more than 25 events and initiatives, engaging over 100 artists, and placed craft at the heart of current cultural conversations in Saudi Arabia and beyond.

The centre treated handicrafts as living cultural practices, shaped by communities and creative experimentation. Ithra’s curators linked traditional skills with present-day artistic production, emphasising how crafts respond to changing social contexts. This method aimed to reinforce the place of manual knowledge within the wider cultural scene, while maintaining close ties to local heritage and everyday experience.

According to Ithra, seven art exhibitions formed a core part of the 2025 handicrafts programme, four of which opened during the year. These shows brought together more than 100 Saudi and international artists. Each exhibition approached craft as a rooted aesthetic language and as a cultural record, revealing how artisanal skills carry histories, beliefs and regional identities.

One of the key exhibitions, "Eternal Crafts: The Art of the Manuscript", introduced visitors to Islamic illumination through an immersive experience. The exhibition highlighted artisans specialising in papermaking, calligraphy and gilding. By focusing on materials and processes, the display showed how manuscript production combines artistic precision, spiritual expression and technical expertise across different Islamic traditions.

"Eternal Crafts: Communal Weaving" offered a different perspective, presenting weaving as a shared practice built on cooperation and inherited skills. The exhibition emphasised the intensive labour and community knowledge present in weaving workshops. It framed weaving as a living tradition that changes with time while preserving its collective values and deep social roots within many communities.

Another exhibition, "Continuation of a Craft: Saudi Traditional Costumes", focused on traditional dress and jewellery from various regions of Saudi Arabia. The display shed light on the craft techniques behind garments and adornments, including fabric choices, decorative methods and metalwork. Through these details, visitors could see the cultural variety that distinguishes different parts of the Kingdom.

"Horizon in Their Hands: Women Artists from the Arab World" examined how women artists connect craft and visual art. Fifty Arab women artists shared works that drew on memory, heritage and modern artistic methods. By including selected pieces from the Barjeel Art Foundation and Ithra’s collection, the exhibition linked Arab creativity to modernist movements that emerged more than fifty years ago.

In a related approach, "Crafts in Conversation: A Convergence Between Traditional and Contemporary Art" created a space where artisanal practices met experimental art. The exhibition combined works by contemporary artists who revisited traditional crafts with examples of historical Islamic art from Ithra’s holdings. This dialogue suggested how inherited techniques can inspire new forms without losing their original references.

Ithra handicrafts initiatives, residencies and international craft outreach

A pivotal step within Ithra’s programme was "In Praise of the Artisan", which presented newly commissioned works made with highly developed craft skills. The exhibition traced the development of Islamic crafts and their key historical centres. It showed craft as a link between different eras and regions, as well as a channel for passing knowledge between generations and cultures.

Alongside this, "Baseqat: The Palm Tree" explored how the palm tree supports diverse craft practices. The exhibition examined palm-leaf weaving, papermaking and textile techniques that rely on palm materials. By foregrounding the local environment, the show underlined the connection between natural resources, regional economies and the creative possibilities offered by palm-based handicrafts.

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To deepen engagement with palm heritage, Ithra launched the Khoos Residency as part of the broader Khoos initiative introduced in 2025. The residency invited artisans, designers and artists, from Saudi Arabia and abroad, to experiment with new approaches to palm-based crafts. Participants looked at how traditional methods could inform forward-looking designs while staying rooted in local knowledge.

This focus on palm crafts also resulted in a visual production, the documentary Sa‘fa. The film offered a reflective visual and narrative study of palm weaving. Through close observation of tools, techniques and workshop rhythms, the documentary presented palm weaving as both a source of income and a form of cultural memory preserved through practice.

Internationally, Ithra continued to widen its reach by cooperating with Turquoise Mountain to present "Patterns of Faith". This exhibition proposed a contemporary reading of craftsmanship within Islamic art. It featured a curated selection of artisanal works that illustrated how faith, geometry, material and everyday function intersect in objects made across different Islamic cultures.

Ithra also took part in the ICOM Pavilion in Dubai, where three projects were highlighted: the Khoos initiative, "In Praise of the Artisan", and the "Hijrah: In the Footsteps of the Prophet" exhibition. Through these projects, Ithra sought to connect material heritage with contemporary creative practice, integrating research and cultural storytelling into museum displays and visitor experiences.

On the policy and heritage dialogue level, Ithra participated in Mondiacult 2025 in Barcelona, hosting a session on intangible cultural heritage. The discussion addressed how crafts operate as living traditions transmitted through everyday practice. It also considered how cultural institutions can support artisans while documenting and presenting non-material aspects such as skills, rituals and community roles.

Within Saudi Arabia, artisanal heritage remained central to several public programmes. The Ithra Summer Camp, held under the theme "Little Hands, Big Ideas", was designed for children. The camp provided an interactive learning environment that encouraged curiosity and introduced young participants to local heritage, including crafts, through workshops and storytelling activities suited to younger audiences.

Supporting this, Ithra organised a series of panel discussions under the title Authenticity of Crafts: A Journey through Saudi Heritage. Artisans, researchers and authors who have studied handicrafts took part. The sessions examined historical sources, regional practices and present challenges, contributing to a shared understanding of how crafts developed and how documentation can support their continuity.

The Pockets of Light programme added another layer to this effort. Through multiple sessions, it traced stories of crafts across different historical periods and social settings. Speakers discussed how handicrafts contribute to quality of life and stressed the need to safeguard traditional professions as a cultural legacy passed within families and communities over many generations.

Ithra stated that 2025 represented a year of intensified engagement with the Year of Handicrafts across its exhibitions, residencies and public programmes. By creating direct opportunities for artisans to share expertise with visitors, the centre worked to strengthen the status of handicrafts as an essential element of national identity in Saudi Arabia and as part of the wider cultural heritage.

With inputs from SPA